An official decision by a government to forgive people for crimes or political offenses, so they are no longer punished. It often applies to large groups rather than individuals.
From Greek *amnēstia* (“forgetfulness, pardon”), from *a-* (“not”) and *mnēstis* (“remembrance”), related to *mnasthai* (“to remember”). It originally meant a kind of official “forgetting” of offenses.
Amnesty is organized forgetting: the state chooses to act as if certain crimes never happened. It comes from the same root as “amnesia,” but applied to legal records instead of personal memory. Forgiveness here is literally a decision not to remember.
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